So, the new TV dramedia problem seems to be that Chaz Bono, the son of Sonny Bono, who was raised a girl* (Chaz, not Bono), is on Dancing with the Stars. Now, normally, I don’t watch shows like this. I don’t find them entertaining. I rarely watch TV, so when I do decide to watch something, I like it to be useful, somehow. I’m going to make an exception, though. I’m going to try to catch some episodes of Chaz on Dancing with the Stars. Why? Because people are complaining about Chaz. They aren’t complaining about Chaz because he’s bad at dancing, which is supposed to be the point of the show, they’re complaining because Chaz had a sex change.*

This is stupid. The transgender community faces a lot of bigotry which is difficult to deal with, already. What better way is there to create acceptance for something, though, than to keep it in the spotlight? I want to see Chaz succeed, just because these people criticizing him over his sexuality is absurd and stupid and bigoted. (Though, it would be really awesome if Chaz were crazy talented, too).

Because of this bigotry, I want to see Chaz win. Let him rock the world a bit.

So, this is what I want to see happen. EVEN IF YOU HATE THIS KIND OF SHOW, watch it. Suffer through the whole thing. Be sure to watch it in a way that your viewing shows up on the statistics the station gets for the show. View it on satellite or cable. Also, I understand there is voting involved in shows like this. Vote! Make it known that you want to keep Chaz. Yes, you may have to suffer. I’ve heard rumors about shows like this. The mountain lion of inanity may eat your face off, but you must be brave!

Seriously, keep Chaz on the show and help keep the show viewership high. WATCH IT. Also, pass this on.

P. S. If you’re a regular viewer of Dancing with the Stars, keep your non viewing friends updated by posting information about the show and voting on your facebook. I don’t want to encourage cheating (grin), but help raise your friends’ awareness.

*Note: This article isn’t intended to harm anyone’s feelings about the language used when discussing transgender issues. I’m aware of those issues. Sadly, most of this issue is floating around in the media using the same terminology I’m using. Furthermore, it is the terminology people will understand. Raising awareness on this particular thing is more important than being picky over terms that most people aren’t going to understand. I try to write things according to what my readers will be able to absorb as much as possible. Thanks for your understanding.

**There was a bit of a debate over this post. It seems I offended some people in the transgender community. Others in the transgender community seemed to disagree with the ones offended. As a result, I was terribly confused at who was correct. I did know, however, that my post was having an impact I didn’t expect. As a result, I turned to someone I knew could offer some good insight, my friend Tara Birl. She suggested that I change the above post to this to make it more considerate:

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So, the new TV dramedia problem seems to be that Chaz Bono, the son of Sonny Bono, who as a transgendered person, identifies male but was assigned female at birth (Chaz, not Bono), is on Dancing with the Stars. Now, normally, I don’t watch shows like this. I don’t find them entertaining. I rarely watch TV, so when I do decide to watch something, I like it to be useful, somehow. I’m going to make an exception, though. I’m going to try to catch some episodes of Chaz on Dancing with the Stars. Why? Because people are complaining about Chaz. They aren’t complaining about Chaz because he’s bad at dancing, which is supposed to be the point of the show, they’re complaining because Chaz finally came out as male.

This is stupid. The transgender community faces a lot of bigotry which is difficult to deal with, already. What better way is there to create acceptance for something, though, than to keep it in the spotlight? I want to see Chaz succeed, just because these people criticizing him over his gender identity is absurd and stupid and bigoted. (Though, it would be really awesome if Chaz were crazy talented, too).

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I admit that I fogged up the issue by using the word “sexuality” the way I did, but that has more to do with sexual categorization. I think that Tara’s edits are a good answer to the problem, but by the time I was able to do anything, my post was up long enough that I was uncomfortable editing it so late, but I wanted to acknowledge that improvements could have been made.

Special thanks to Tara for taking an awesome, level-headed approach to this.